Posts Tagged liturgical texts

“He (Pope Francis) said the translation has to be faithful both to the original Latin text and to the language into which it is translated, and also must be comprehensible to those for whom it is destined.” (America: The Jesuit Review)

Pope Francis has publicly corrected Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, in a letter released by the Vatican on Oct. 22, 2017. In that letter, the pope informs the cardinal that the commentary attributed to Sarah on the motu proprio ‘Magnum Principium,’ regarding the translation of liturgical texts, is not a faithful and correct interpretation of that papal decree.

“The motu proprio (an edict issued by the Pope personally), released on Sept. 15, 2017, restored to bishops’ conferences the authority given to them by the Second Vatican Council to ‘recognize’ or approve the translations of liturgical texts from the Latin Missale Romanum into the language of their respective countries. That authority was taken away by ‘Liturgiam Authenticam,’ an instruction on the implementation of Vatican II’s constitution on the liturgy, approved by John Paul II in March 2001 and subsequently issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship.”

“It was probably not until the very late 1980s and early 1990s, however, the bubbling controversy in liturgical matters came to a boiling point.” (National Catholic Reporter)

Pope Francis’ Sept. 9 announcement that he was decentralizing the Vatican’s authority over translations of liturgical texts, turning that duty back over to local bishops, created quite a buzz in Catholic circles because, for some, it capped a story that spans more than 50 years. It is the story of the ‘liturgy wars.’

“Consternation over the liturgy has roiled through the Catholic community since sweeping reforms were introduced by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) — although truth be told, many of the changes that came in the 1960s rose out of liturgical reform movements in the 1940s and ’50s.

“It was probably not until the very late 1980s and early 1990s, however, the bubbling controversy in liturgical matters came to a boiling point.

“If one wants to point to a time and event when controversy turned to conflict and the tagline ‘liturgy wars’ could be applied to what was happening, a secret meeting in the Vatican in 1997 might be that point and time.”

By James Dearie and Dennis Coday, National Catholic Reporter (story contains links to others in NCR series on the Magnum Principium) — Read more …